Rate hikes, rising inflation and difficult decisions: key takeaways from Jim Chalmers’ budget update

Jim Chalmers has claimed “the most responsible mid-year update on record”, unveiling a multibillion-dollar improvement in the budget bottom line alongside extra money for mental health, CSIRO, and training for tradies.Here are the three key takeaways from the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook.As expected, this is a mid-year budget that’s all about the savings. Chalmers warned of “difficult decisions” ahead of today, but there’s no big shock.Instead, the treasurer is making a virtue of small improvements in the bottom line, made harder by some cost blow-outs in areas like disaster relief, which will cost $6

Water levels across the Great Lakes are falling – just as US data centers move in

The sign outside Tom Hermes’s farmyard in Perkins Township in Ohio, a short drive south of the shores of Lake Erie, proudly claims that his family have farmed the land here since 1900. Today, he raises 130 head of cattle and grows corn, wheat, grass and soybeans on 1,200 acres of land.For his family, his animals and wider business, water is life.So when, in May 2024, the Texas-based Aligned Data Centers broke ground on its NEO-01, four-building, 200,000 sq ft data center on a brownfield site that abuts farmland that Hermes rents, he was concerned.“We have city water here

Boost for artists in AI copyright battle as only 3% back UK active opt-out plan

A campaign fronted by popstars including Elton John and Dua Lipa to protect artists’ works from being mined to train AI models without consent has received a boost after almost every respondent to a government consultation backed their case.Ninety-five per cent of the more than 10,000 people who had their say over how music, novels, films and other works should be protected from copyright infringements by tech companies called for copyright to be strengthened and a requirement for licensing in all cases or no change to copyright law.By contrast, only 3% of people backed the government’s initial preferred tech company-friendly option, which was to require artists and copyright holders to actively opt out of having their material fed into data-hungry AI systems.Ministers subsequently dropped that preference in the face of a backlash. Artists who have opposed any dilution of their copyright include Sam Fender, Kate Bush and the Pet Shop Boys

The Anti-Sports Personality of the Year awards 2025

On Thursday night the BBC will honour the heroes. But here are the year’s best dark, devious and downright dumb sporting storiesAnother year, another raft of sporting cheating scandals for our annual anti‑Spoty awards. Where the BBC Sports Personality ceremony this week rewards the cream of athletic endeavour, the Guardian instead shines a light on the darkest corners of sporting skulduggery.After the troubles last year with Xiangqi (AKA Chinese chess), in 2025 it was the turn of Weiqi (known in the west as Go), whose sedate world was rocked first by news that the 19-year-old Chinese prodigy Qin Siyue had been rumbled in the ninth round of the Chinese Team Championship – actually played last December, though for a couple of months Go managed to (ironically) stop the news emerging – for using AI and a hidden phone to plot her moves.Then in January a diplomatic storm erupted over the final of the Baduk world championship (baduk being the Korean name for weiqi), in which Korea’s Byun Sang-il beat China’s Ke Jie thanks to the confusing and controversial mid-tournament introduction of new scoring rules

Deals put UK-US trade relationship in the spotlight | Letters

Far from costing British lives, as Aditya Chakrabortty suggests (What will be the cost of Keir Starmer’s new medicines deal with Donald Trump? British lives, 11 December), the UK-US medicines agreement is designed to support NHS patients by improving access to new and innovative treatments.The agreement raises the baseline threshold used by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to assess the cost-effectiveness for new medicines, enabling more treatments to be considered for NHS use.It does not retrospectively increase the price of existing branded medicines. It also caps repayment rates for newer medicines at no more than 15% from 2026 to 2028, replacing an unpredictable system that has hampered investment and patient access to cutting-edge treatments.The UK has fallen behind international competitors in both life sciences investment and access to innovative medicines

Ministers ‘break word’ on protecting nature after weakening biodiversity planning rule

The government has broken its promise to protect nature by weakening planning rules for housing developers, groups have said.While developers once had to create “biodiversity net gain” (BNG), meaning creating 10% more space for nature on site than there was before the building took place, the housing minister Matthew Pennycook announced exemptions to this rule on Tuesday.Under the new rules developments under 0.2 hectares are exempted from the policy. Analysis from the Wildlife Trusts has found that this means a combined area across England the size of Windsor forest will now not be restored for nature